Lost Love
by lindseyleprosy
Summary: After Shane leaves her at the altar, Carmen visits Shane's first love to learn what happened to make the girl she loves into such a polygamous creature.


**Part One - Loner**

Okay, so I guess you want to know all about Shane pre-Hollywood, huh? No other reason you'd come out here in the middle of nowhere. Here - let me just light up one last cigarette - have a seat.

So what do you wanna know? How we met, okay, let's do this.

First off, I can't imagine Shane after I met her, no way can I even envision what happened to her between this fucking dump and California. Is it warm down there? Sunny? Good. So anyway, I have no clue about all this shit you came in here with. Shane? Servicing John's and screwing her pathway through the girls of Hollywood? That doesn't really sound like the "Miss McCutcheon" I knew.

Now, I'm not saying Shane was a complete angel. She got her fair share of detentions and suspensions.

Fine, fine. I'll start the goddamn story. Bitch.

Shane was - well, she was quite the loner. She didn't really have a lot of friends, no one really liked her. She was lesbian from the start, always did flirt with the cheerleaders. I should know - I was one. She'd walk down the halls throwing us blondies these knowing looks, and we'd all lick our lips and pretend we were doing it for some poor geek boy behind her. Not just me - all of us.

No one really knew much about her home life. Just that her dad was some crazy drunk motherfucker who couldn't stay with one girl for long. He also didn't pay much attention to her, or else, you know, he'd known she was making out with _girls _behind the bleachers.

It wasn't like she did it as often as you're implying she does.

Every few months, she'd set her eye on someone. She didn't ever sleep with them. She'd just try to convert them. And when they didn't come around, she gave up. It's like the soul went right out of her after her conquests said she was fun for a minute but not for a relationship. They were the sluts, from one date to the next, not her.

Maybe that's why she is the way she is now.

Anyway, the girls all did that in secret. It was like a game to them: make out with Shane McCutcheon and giggle about it in the changing rooms. They didn't really care for her. It was all good, old teenage fun.

But I was serious about it.

I knew two things about Shane, that was it:

1) She was irresistible, and I had to get to her.  
2) She didn't let anyone get to her.

**Part Two - Lust**

Cheerleaders know how to make guys fight over them. So I applied those techniques to Shane, who'd made moon eyes at every cheerleader so far but me. It wasn't like I was ugly or anything, obviously not, just that she knew - well, she thought she knew - that I was completely straight and uninterested, so it wasn't worth even trying.

I'd flip my hair and touch my neck if I happened to stop her in the hall to talk. I'd stop her just to start a conversation, only to have it divert into small banter on our way to class.

"Hi." Smile a toothy grin.

"Hey."

"What's up?" move my hair to one side of my head, leave the other side of my neck completely exposed.

"Nothing. Just detention, again."

"Farris?" I'd tilt my head to the side, feigning interest in the actual topic.

"Yeah. She's a bitch."

"I know, right?"

Shane would nod, having nothing more to say. I'd finger the pleats on my cheerleading skirt and peer up at her through my bangs.

"So, we have a game tonight, you wanna _come_?" I put emphasis on the last word. Made it sound sexual.

"I might." Good lord, she had to have been as blind as a bat, couldn't even see that I was lifting my skirt and gently bumping into her. "Gotta jet, I'm already late. Bye."

"Okay. Bye." I'd wave, flash another grin, even my hair out, and skip down the hall to my classes.

To be such a flirt, Shane obviously couldn't see my advances.

**Part Three - Lady Luck**

Shane did come to the game that night. I was surprised when, in between flips and "Go Team!"s, I saw her familiar form, leaning up against the side of the bleachers, where she'd held so many Study Hall Makeouts.

"Shane." I whispered, barely audible, my mouth flickering into a real smile, not a fake one put on for my routine. She caught my eye and waved a half-wave, gave me a half-smile. Everything about her was half.

_Dammit_. I don't have anymore cigarettes. Oh, well. Back to the story.

So at half-time - ha, more halves - I trotted over to her side. "Enjoying the show?"

"Yeah. I actually like it when the skirts go up and you do those little twirly things." I pet-punched her, but I was really basking in the compliment.

"I have a question. How come you never paid attention to me before now?"

"I wanted to see if you were for real. I mean, all the other cheerleaders, well, they don't quite like to get serious. I wanted to see if you just wanted to play that game where you make out for a little and then forget me."

Aww. That's so sad. That timid little Shane would up and turn herself into one of those girls. I mean, when I knew her, she was on the opposite end of the spectrum of where she is now. I mean, yeah, everyone wanted her, but only as a pet mouse to paw around and then laugh at.

And now you say she is doing exactly what she told me she didn't want me to do? Shit.

Anyway, that night I explained to her I wasn't like that. I wasn't the Head Cheerleader, I wasn't like the other girls who had three-week flings and then moved on. I was actually interested in a _relationship _with Shane.

**Part Four - Little Bit Of This, Little Bit Of That**

Shane and I were the first "lesbian couple" at our school.

But of course, I was a cheerleader, so being gay became the "new cool thing" and everyone pretended to folllow suit. I had at first been so scared that I'd be kicked off the team and ostracized, but oddly no one even imagined it. It was just a "whatever" thing at our school. An odd thing to brush into in the '80s.

We went everywhere. To the movies, to the mall, out to the greasy '50s diner a block from school. In the classes we had together, we'd sit, cuddled up, giggling as if the whole world was our big gay oyster. When we didn't have classes together, we'd stand outside the door and trade lengthy goodbye kisses. Ones that made the jocks grab their crotches as if we were really interested in them.

_It _didn't happen until long after you'd imagine.

We were sitting in Shane's bedroom, three months after that first basketball game she'd attended, kissing and studying and kissing some more.

And it just _happened_. There was no plan, it was a spontaneous reaction to Shane accidently brushing too far up my thigh when she was pointing to a passage in our Chemistry book. A wisp of a moan escaped me, and before I knew it we were a tangle of limbs, the text forgotten on the floor beneath a pile of clothing.

We heard her dad come in drunk somewhere in the middle. We just kept on as if he wasn't downstairs stumbling into everything and cussing loudly to the television. I'm sure he had to have heard the noises emanating from upstairs. But he didn't come up, so we didn't stop.

When we were done, we lay together, holding each other, listening to the sounds of life, not caring about anything but each other.

I left through the front door a few hours later, her father was passed out on the couch. I watched through the window and saw Shane covering her dad up with a blanket and pulls his shoes off, before smiling to herself and going back up to her room.

I was surprised to learn I was her first.

**Part Five - Lost**

There was no break up.

There was no long goodbye.

I just woke up one day and she was gone.

I had a friend drive me by her house, and it was dead, with a For Sale sign in the front yard.

I know it sounds abrupt, but real life doesn't arrange things so they're all romantic.

That's just life.

She was lost to me.

And I never saw her again.

So now will you tell me about her, just tell me everything so I can feel her inside me again?

Are you crying?

I don't - dammit.

Carmen?


End file.
